Monday, July 15, 2013

The Brodhead Commission Report

That any commission, of any type, could consider Richard Brodhead as a
vehicle to build public support for anything related to higher education
is nothing short of astonishing. That a figure who presided over one of the
highest-profile university scandals of recent years—a scandal in which his
school’s humanities professors played an outsized role—would seem like a good
choice to improve public backing for the humanities is almost comical.

Some of the report’s conclusions were almost caricatures of the banal.
For instance, who could disagree with the following statement, which appears on
page 16? “Our need for a broadly literate population is more urgent than
ever. As citizens, we need to absorb an ever-growing body of information and to
assess the sources of that information. As workers, we need to adapt to an
ever-accelerating rate of technological change and to reflect on the implications
of these changes. As members of a global community, we need to look beyond
our borders to communicate and interact with individuals from societies and cultures
different from our own. As a nation, we need to provide an educational foundation
for our future stability and prosperity— drawing on all areas of knowledge.”

Or consider this item, from the study’s acknowledgements: the report “identifies
three overarching goals: 1) to educate Americans in the knowledge, skills, and
understanding they will need to thrive in a twenty-first-century democracy;
2) to foster a society that is innovative, competitive, and strong; and 3)
to equip the nation for leadership in an interconnected world. These goals
cannot be achieved by science alone.” Do those who oppose the study’s
recommendations favor a society that is luddite, uncompetitive, and weak?

The report also champions such public policy goals as strengthening
support for teachers, enhancing access to material available online, supporting
study abroad programs, boosting funding for NEH, and promoting the learning of
foreign languages. Of course, all of these proposals (each of which seems to me
an excellent idea) take money, and the Brodhead commission doesn’t quite
explain how or why more tax revenue will find its way into higher education.

And there’s one funding-related question that the Brodhead commission
dare not touch. We live in a society that’s deeply polarized along ideological
and partisan lines. And yet the humanities skews—wildly—in one direction, to
such an extent that it seems almost certain that today the ideological median
of humanities professors is further away from the ideological median of society
at large than at any other point in American history. Is it possible—just possible—that
this ideological chasm, a general sense among most politicians that today’s
humanities departments aren’t exactly the most intellectually diverse entities
around, has caused a reluctance to fund? The Brodhead commission doesn’t ask
that question—perhaps because it doesn’t want to know the answer.

In at least three other respects, the commission is almost blissfully
self-unaware in its commentary. First, the commission expresses grave concern
about the state of affairs in high school history and social studies
instruction. We need more high school civics classes, the report declares,
and the quality of teacher preparation is dangerously low. The report (p. 19) foresees “grave
consequences for the nation” that “humanities teachers, particularly in k-12
history, are less well-trained than teachers in other subject areas.”

It’s not hard, however, to detect at least one importance reason
for this problem. Public school curricula continue to be set by state boards of
education—which are responsible to the public, and which generally mandate
curricula that would be deemed somewhat “traditional.” Students in high school
history classes are supposed to learn about, among other things, Presidents,
and wars, and key court decisions, and major elections.

Yet Brodhead and the many other college presidents who were
part of the commission have presided over universities that have emphasized
“diversity” and the hiring of specialists in areas related to race, class, or
gender over the study of more traditional aspects of the American past. I most
recently discussed
this issue
in a multi-part
series at Minding
the Campus. As a result, most public school teachers can go through college
and M.A. programs with little—or in the case of U.S. military or constitutional
history, almost certainly no—exposure to specialists in the fields that they
then have to teach to the nation’s public school students.

And so the report urges an expansion of “education in
international affairs” (p. 12)—without mentioning the massive decline in the
past generation in faculty positions devoted to U.S. diplomatic or military
history, the result of hiring decisions that these very same presidents (or
their predecessors) have ultimately approved.

The nation’s founders, the report intones (p. 15),
understood that the country’s well-being depended on citizens who “understand
their own history,” and it’s particularly important to study “jurisprudence.” Yet
the report makes no mention that the field of U.S. constitutional history has
been all but eliminated in the nation’s history departments, the result of
hiring decisions that these very same presidents (or their predecessors) have
ultimately approved.

Indeed, virtually the only high-profile president in recent
years who was concerned about such matters was Harvard’s Larry Summers. And he
was deposed via a faculty revolt.

Second, the commission’s report veers into territory that it would seem
to want to avoid—in that it calls into question the ideological imbalances in
the contemporary academy. For instance, on page 10, the report asserts that “humanists
and social scientists are critical in providing cultural, historical, and
ethical expertise and empirical analysis to efforts that address issues such as
the provision of clean air and water, food, health, energy, and universal
education.”

Health, environmental, and energy policies are among the
most contentious in our current political climate. What incentive would GOP
legislators or conservative donors—two groups ostensibly targeted by the report—have
to boost humanities funding if the result is increased attention to policy proposals
where 90 percent or more of today’s humanities professors are on the other side
from the targeted funders? I find it hard to believe, for instance, that this line
of argument would persuade the Kochs that it’s a good idea for them to start making
more donations to college humanities programs.

Finally, the commission itself was blissfully self-unaware in allowing
Brodhead to function as its public face. In its
section analyzing the problems facing higher education, the report’s first
footnote is none other than an item from Brodhead, entitled, “Rebuilding
the Public’s Confidence in Higher Ed.” This would be the same Brodhead whose
highest-profile off-campus appearance came in a widely-panned 60 Minutes appearance in which he tried,
in vain, to defend his university’s rush to judgment in the lacrosse case. Or
whose highest-profile off-campus reputation dealing with the humanities came in
his presiding over a school that had dozens of humanities professors sign a
public declaration affirming that something had “happened” to false accuser
Crystal Mangum, and thanking protesters who had urged among other things the
castration of the lacrosse captains.

The Brodhead commission report seeks
to build off-campus support for the humanities—from legislators, from donors,
and ultimately from the public. Yet Brodhead’s record in the lacrosse case is
merely a click away for any of these target audiences. Could the commission not
have found someone less compromised than Brodhead to serve as its public face?

The commission’s selection of the
Duke president as its member most likely to persuade legislators or the public would be a
little like trying to persuade a gay rights group by turning to a high-ranking
figure in the Catholic Church; or seeking to solicit financial contributions
from a mining organization by soliciting a report penned by a prominent Sierra
Club lobbyist. After his performance in the lacrosse case, why should any
public official accept Richard Brodhead’s advice about anything?

but it was true by all accounts through the history of duke which includes up to today - the headline that is

broadheads loftiness stuck in the clouds of education that is needed - but which he is clearly aware is not available through traditional schooling to the majority of the US populace - is either an acknowledgement of his own self-aware superiority and his ability to manipulate the masses through his own means of control available at his fingertips - or an admission of the need for more education and resources in order to level the playing field for all.

i think duke has a hubris that they are masters of the field - when their mastery is actually based upon corruption, inhumane power and mind control techniques of the masses, and the ability to manipulate the minds of the many to give, give, give to their cause of gaining ultimate control and power in a world made to only their liking and sustainability which they try to vainly hide from the unaware many while scoffing blantantly, continuously, and obviously at those whom continue to ignorately give, give, give and those whom try to point out the obvious destructive nature of the game

I am glad to see Mike Nifong is still paying, in print, for his crimes. I see the link between Nifong and Corey as a form of justice. I do see Corey overtaking Nifong in the race as the most disgusting prosecutor. Maybe we could coin a new word, "Corfonged" just to get out ahead of the new trend of naming "disgraced-former-prosecutor" actions.

The beginning of a solution here is to terminate ALL English departments in all colleges/universities in America. They are only hotbeds of Marxism and political correctness. Basic English grammar and English skills can be taught in other departments in the context of writing real papers about something logical and rational and useful.

It is truly tragic that Trayvon died. However, there are statistics available on the web that Black men are much more likely to be killed by other black men than white of hispanic neighborhood watchmen.

Mr. Obama has said that 35 years ago he might have been gunned down. If that had happened the perp would have more likely been another black man. Similarly, Trayvon's mother has said that she does not want another black mother to lose her son the way she lost Trayvon. If that does happen, again, it is more likely that the perp will be another black man.

Skapegoating George Zimmerman will not do anything about the murder of young black men. Neither will pandering to one of the most virulent race baiters in US History, Al Sharpton.

I was reading a satire blog, Carbolic Smoke Ball, which I think is better than The Onion, and I remembered a page they put together about the ‘Gang of 88.’ Brodhead, Nifong, McClain all get a dig. This is a funny flashback that might give you a chuckle or two.

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About Me

I am from Higgins Beach, in Scarborough, Maine, six miles south of Portland. After spending five years as track announcer at Scarborough Downs, I left to study fulltime in graduate school, where my advisor was Akira Iriye. I have a B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard, and an M.A. from the University of Chicago. At Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, I teach classes in 20th century US political, constitutional, and diplomatic history; in 2007-8, I was Fulbright Distinguished Chair for the Humanities at Tel Aviv University.

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"From the Scottsboro Boys to Clarence Gideon, some of the most memorable legal narratives have been tales of the wrongly accused. Now “Until Proven Innocent,” a new book about the false allegations of rape against three Duke lacrosse players, can join these galvanizing cautionary tales . . , Taylor and Johnson have made a gripping contribution to the literature of the wrongly accused. They remind us of the importance of constitutional checks on prosecutorial abuse. And they emphasize the lesson that Duke callously advised its own students to ignore: if you’re unjustly suspected of any crime, immediately call the best lawyer you can afford."--Jeffrey Rosen, New York Times Book Review